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OTTAWA – The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) welcomes today’s news that Bill C-9 has been put on hold, calling it a necessary response to serious and unresolved conflicts between the proposed hate crimes legislation and Canada’s Constitutional protections for free expression.

Bill C-9 was unsound from the start. Rather than narrowly targeting violence or threats, it would have expanded criminal law into the realm of ordinary expression, lowered the threshold for criminal speech, and stripped away long-standing safeguards designed to protect Charter rights. As the bill developed, its problems only became more glaring. A December amendment to the bill even threatened to remove good-faith religious belief as an exemption from hate speech.

The CCF was at the forefront of opposition to Bill C-9. Litigation Director Christine Van Geyn spoke before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in November, and submitted a comprehensive written brief, warning that the bill posed an unjustified threat to freedom of expression. The CCF consistently called on Parliament to withdraw the bill entirely, including by mobilizing public support through a widely-circulated email campaign that helped more than 7,000 Canadians write their MPs.

“Bill C-9 threatened Constitutionally-protected expression and would have led to the chilling of necessary public debate across Canada,” said Van Geyn. “Shelving it for now is an important step toward preserving free speech, which we hope leads to the full abandonment of this deeply flawed legislation.”

The CCF hopes the Carney government will now recognize that legislation built on such deep constitutional defects cannot be salvaged and should not be pursued.